


Screams in the Dark

by Paradise_of_Mary_Jane



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-19
Updated: 2016-02-19
Packaged: 2018-05-21 15:42:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6057070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paradise_of_Mary_Jane/pseuds/Paradise_of_Mary_Jane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fifteen moments in the life of Walburga Black. The story of her descent into madness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Screams in the Dark

Walburga enters the world screaming, as most children do.

 

And as most children, she doesn’t stop for a good long while.

 

There are whispers that, unlike other children, she never stopped at all.

 

 

\-----

 

 

Her father has a gay laugh, full-bodied and loud. Walbourga makes it her goal to hear it at least once a day and not to face his anger any more than that.

 

Because Pollux Black might have held the freshness of childhood but he is a Black right to the bone and Blacks are nothing if not cold. They all have the unmistakable haughtiness and cruelty that came with the belief that they are better than everyone else.

 

Walburga Black rarely sees him. Rarer still is to see him smile at _her._

 

(She made the mistake of running towards him when she was a young girl once, just as he was returning from Hogwarts.

 

Her screams echoed across the halls of Grimmauld Place that day.

 

His anger was sharp, cutting, and unforgiving)

 

Walburga dreams of the days when she will hear her father’s ringing laugh directed at her so she learns to do what would please him.

 

(Or at least, she tries to learn. She never really managed to remain silent)

 

A Black never screams and Walburga is a Black. She learns to temper her fire.

 

There is no place for that in a Black.

 

 

\-----

 

 

Walburga’s first brother arrives on her eighth year. Alphard Black. He seems to have been born with mischief in his eyes and a desire to torment Walburga. She has grown to fear the days whenever that wild grin of his shows up on his face.

 

Her second brother, Cygnus, born a year later, is not nearly as cruel, though that never seems to stop him from standing back and laughing as Alphard tormented her.

 

Walburga holds her head high and says nothing just as her mother taught her. She feels a strange clenching in her chest as she watches her father dote on her brothers’ mischief while she is off to one side, sitting prim and proper as is expected of her. She catches Alphard gazing at her sometimes, a smug smirk playing at his lips, as if he knows exactly what she’s thinking and knows that he’s the reason for it.

 

 

\-----

 

 

Orion is cold. He’s always been cold. Second cousins and constantly together because they are Blacks and they will always belong with each other. Walbourga can’t remember a time that she didn’t know Orion.

 

And she’s known before she could walk that Orion is cold.

 

It doesn’t matter of course, it was expected of him. He is a Black, after all, and a perfect heir. He can be very charming when he wants to be, with his glinting grey eyes, and shiny, dark hair. His melodious laugh has been known to reduce lesser girls to their knees. It’s just that he rarely wants to be with Walburga. So when her parents announce their engagement, Walburga smiles and takes Orion’s hand in hers. Orion doesn’t return any of it, just lets his hand be held, face impassive. His gaze is already distant, settling on a woman with bright eyes and brighter hair, just behind her. Walburga pretends she doesn’t notice.

 

Alphard is a smirking presence in their wedding, standing at Orion’s side as his best man.

 

And when they join each other on their wedding bed, there is no genuine affection, their touches brief and cold. The two of them are just performing another thing that is expected of them, nothing more.

 

He is gone the next day, no doubt to whomever his gaze has chosen to settle on the previous night.

 

But he is good to her. Not kind, never kind; he is cold and distant and Walburga spends most of her days alone in her childhood home, but he is good to her and it is better than what she could have expected.

 

He could’ve hated her, that’s what Walbourga tells herself whenever the loneliness proves to be too much. He could’ve hated her for each year that her womb provides him no children. He could have hated her for Cygnus’ smug looks, three girls standing between him and his wife, while his own remained childless.

 

Orion could have hated her, but he doesn’t. He barely glances at her with any passing interest, let alone hate. And that, Walburga tells herself, has to count for something.

 

 

\-----

 

 

When she first feels the life growing in her womb, Walbourga scarcely allows herself to hope. When a healer confirms it a month later, she feels a lightness in her chest. At last! At last, she will be able to prove her worth. To prove herself as a Black.

 

When she tells Orion with barely contained glee, and he does nothing but nod at her distantly, she tells herself that it’s not disappointment that flutters in her.

 

She tells herself that there’s nothing to be disappointed in the first place. When there’s been nothing there to begin with, what did she have to lose?

 

 

\-----

 

 

“I wanted to apologize,” Alphard says. He sits stiff on one of Walbourga’s armchairs, looking out of place. He has been that for a long time now. Not quite enough to be disowned, not quite a black sheep, but he has a softness for muggles that has most of the family turning their noses in disgust. “I haven’t been the best of brothers to you and the tricks I’ve played on you when we were children… I wanted to apologize for it,” he adds hastily.

 

“What brought this on?” Walburga asks, voice sounding stilted and unnatural even to her own ears. Tricks, Alphard had called them, as if he had just cheated her in some childhood game.

 

“There’s a war brewing Walburga, this isn’t the time for us to fight amongst ourselves.”

 

“You need my help, you mean,” Walburga says. “You’ve made a disgrace out of yourself and need someone to vouch for you. And you think you can convince me.”

 

“That’s not—” Alphard begins before cutting himself off, perhaps realizing how precarious the ground he was walking on is. “Can’t I just want to fix things with my sister.”

 

“You never have before,” Walburga says. “But now that the Dark Lord is rising and he may doubt your loyalties? I always did wonder why everyone doubted your place in Slytherin.”

 

“We’re no longer children Walbourga,” Alphard says, looking and sounding tired. “I think it’s time we moved past this feud of ours. We are family, if nothing else.”

 

Endless nights of tears, and anger and fear, of Walburga hiding in the darkest crevices of her own home just to hide from Alphard’s mischievous eyes. After all that, Alphard expected her to move past it. They may have shared the same blood but Walburga had always felt more like his plaything than his sister. A Black is not nearly as kind, and Walburga is anything if not a proper Black.

 

“I think that it’s time you left dear brother,” she says, voice cold and cutting even to her own ears. Alphard flinches.

 

“Walburga please—”

 

“As I said,” Walburga says, sitting prim and proper as her mother had taught her. This house is hers now and Walburga refuses to be chased away from it ever again, especially by her brother’s presence. “Leave.”

 

 

\-----

 

 

She goes to labour on a cold November afternoon. Painful and dragged out a full thirteen hours, beginning well into the afternoon and ending with the first rays of the next day already peeking through.

 

The child’s scream pierces the dawn’s silence, burying Walburga’s fevered breathing. For once, she is silent.

 

The midwife gently hands the child to her and it was so small to have such a loud and unbearable scream.

 

“No—No—” Walburga doesn’t know what overcomes her mind to push her child away, only that he is too bright, arriving with the sun and chasing the darkness away. He doesn’t belong in a place like this. A place that would choke his screams until only cold silence remained.

 

“It is your child madame,” the midwife coaxes gently. “Isn’t he beautiful? Don’t you not wish to hold him?”

 

He is beautiful. Bright and shining and screaming. The only thing Walburga’s fevered mind can think is that he doesn’t belong here.

 

 

\-----

 

 

They call him Sirius, an heir’s name; and like his namesake he grows brighter and brighter until he is blinding. A year old and he already drives the house elves to madness, running around the house and destroying everything in his wake.

 

Alphard dotes on him. Of course he does. The boy seems to be made from his own mind. Perhaps he is. Perhaps he cast a curse on her like all his other merciless games. Walburga sees her brother’s glares sometimes, sees his spite and merciless jabs whenever the boy runs to him after yet another punishment, as if he was some defending hero.

 

Alphard doesn’t try to approach her again, or speak to her, for that matter. Whenever he chances a visit, Orion is always there and he’ll only ever have eyes for his nephew. Walbourga treats him like a stranger and he returns the favour.

 

‘ _The boy’s full of fire,’_ he’ll say, voice fond, and Orion will laugh his melodious laugh. It’s a thinly-veiled insult for her, like all his words. Her husband doesn’t notice, but it fills Walburga with a coldness in her chest. She is a Black. They are calm temperance and cold glares. Fire has no place in her house. The mere thought that she would’ve produced anything less than what is expected of her—

 

And worst of all, he’s right. Her son is bright and as beautiful, and he is no Black. Not in any of the ways it matters.

 

She learns to hate her first-born quite easily.

 

She gives birth to another son a year later, a small thing, and not as bright as her first, simply a quiet boy who seems to have no needs. It’s for the best, she knows. She might make a Black out of him yet.

 

The thought doesn’t please her as it should.

 

Walburga watches her two boys run after each other in the garden, inseparable despite their differences. Orion is nowhere to be found. She clenches her fist and digs her nails into her palm, digs and digs and digs, until a bright red pours out.

 

Walburga thinks it’s her anger: anger at her brother, her husband, her children, bright red and blinding. Strangely, it only feels like pain.

 

 

\-----

 

 

When Sirius is sorted into Gryffindor, she can’t say she’s surprised but it does nothing to stop her anger.

 

She rages, upturns an entire wine case and sends the house elves into hiding, because it’s wrong; no Black belongs under the lion’s banner.

 

Orion just watches her, his own anger cold and more terrifying. Regulus has locked himself in his room. Silence. Walburga makes it a point to fill the house with screams because someone should. Because the fruit of her flesh had just upturned hundreds of years of tradition and the silence is just too much.

 

So she screams. In another world she may have laughed. She’s been right all along. Sirius had never been a Black, after all, not in any of the ways that it matters.

 

 

\-----

 

 

She draws her wand and points it at the family tree. It is time for him to choose. She has indulged his defiance for long enough. This moment had been a long time coming; since he was sorted into Gryffindor perhaps, or earlier. Perhaps it had been building up from the moment his first scream pierced this earth. Sirius stares at her, chin raised and defiant. He thinks that he can whether her anger like he has many times before, then it will be over with no more than a few bruises as consequence. He thinks that the blood between them will do something to stay her hand. Her son often seems to forget that Walburga was a Black long before she became a mother.

 

“You will do your duty to your family,” she says and her voice doesn’t tremble. _It doesn’t._ “You will abandon these foolish ideas of yours. And you will do what is expected of you.”

 

“I won’t.” And his voice, young and clear and fresh, is filled with rage. They might have sounded alike in another life, but not in this, because Walburga is loyal and it is time for Sirius to choose.

 

“Then you will have no place in this family.”

 

“Fine,” Sirius says and for a moment, one glorious moment, he is a perfect Black. He stands tall, proud, and so very cold; more than ready to go his own way. “Do it then.”

 

And he is gone without so much as another sound, as if he hadn’t once filled her halls with his screams, as if he hadn’t destroyed everything in his wake without a backwards glance.

 

As if he had never existed in the first place.

 

“Walburga,” Orion barks and she turns towards the family tree. She sees a small dark mop of curls and bright grey eyes.

 

_Sirius Black_

 

She remembers a bright-eyed boy that ran across her halls despite her cold glares. Her hatred only seemed to fuel his fire. Now he’s burned through her chains and flying far, far away.

 

The curse was a simple one and done in a second. The walls shake and the house is silent. Hours later, after Orion’s retreated to Merlin knows where and Walburga was left alone in the drawing room staring at the new burn mark, just below hers, on the family tree.

 

She doesn’t know when she begins screaming, but now that she has she can’t bring herself to stop. She cries out—was it tears streaming down her face?—screaming Sirius’ name, over and over. Like a mantra. A final plea to return? A curse for ever daring to come out of her womb and scarring her heart? Walburga doesn’t know and doesn’t care. All she knows is that she has to scream lest she burn from the inside with an unknowable emotion.

 

So she screams.

 

 

\-----

 

 

Alphard dies, but not before he leaves nearly half of the Black family fortune to Sirius.

 

Walburga can almost hear his echoing laughter as she blasts his name off the family tree. A laugh escapes her lips, high and hysterical. This is her revenge for everything he’s put her through. Somehow, it still feels like she’s played right into his hand.

 

 

\-----

 

 

She hears of Sirius, sometimes. It’s hard not to. Whisper had always followed her family. And the fact that Sirius still bears her name but fights in the wrong side of the war… Well, it’s not as if people have ever bothered to cease their gossip.

 

She sees Regulus, sees the look in his eyes. He has always followed his brother like an overgrown puppy and she can see him longing to do so now. It doesn’t matter that they don’t agree with their ideals, doesn’t matter that Regulus has a shrine to the Dark Lord in his room, Sirius has always been the one to lead and Regulus has always been the one to follow. It takes more than a burnt tapestry to erase an entire childhood’s worth of instinct.

 

“You will join the Death Eaters,” she snaps at him. His gaze flickers to the family tapestry and Walbourga clenches her fist at that one act of betrayal. Her nails pierces her skin but she hardly feels it, her hands too scarred and heart too weary.

 

“Of course maman,” Regulus says, voice stilted.

 

 

\-----

 

 

Regulus goes into her rooms one day.

 

(Confined, they tell her. She doesn’t think she’s met the light of day in years.

 

Orion tells her it’s for the best.)

 

“Adieu maman,” he whispers, soft enough that Walburga has to strain to hear his words, longer still to process his words. He presses a feather-light kiss to her forehead before walking away. “I’m sorry.”

 

“Regulus…” she, says, voice cracked and no more than a whisper. If she had the strength, she’ll probably scream. Her thin gnarled hands reaches out, grasping for the last of her sons before he gets away from her as well. “Regulus.”

 

Regulus doesn’t look back, just closes the door softly.

 

He doesn’t return.

 

 

\-----

 

 

It rains on Regulus’ funeral.

 

In another life, she may have held her head high and kept her silence. In this one, she rages against the dark, screaming herself hoarse across the pattering of the rain, pulling strength from Merlin knows where. Three men have to hold her back from joining her son in the ground.

 

She isn’t meant to see him and in another life she wouldn’t have, but she happens to look up for a moment and there he is standing underneath a tree with that Potter boy by his side, half-hidden by shadows, and trees, and rain.

 

He is silent and unseen, almost like a spectre. He slowly raises his head and his eyes find hers. Rain has dulled him, she thinks, and grief. Only a charred creature remained of the boy who once shone so brightly. Only ashes.

 

Walburga can’t quite see from the distance, but she thinks that his lips twist into a bitter smile as he nods at her. He turns and walks away a moment later, the other boy’s hand on his shoulder, as if stopping him from being blown away by the cold November wind.

 

 

\-----

 

 

Walburga Black leaves the world screaming, as all madwomen do.

 

She rages and rages because they aren’t there—they aren’t—

 

She is alone with nothing but the darkness of her own rooms (of her own thoughts). Orion had long since abandoned her, preferring to stay on the other side of the house than see his mad wife.

 

(A disgrace, said coldly and without much emotion, is the last thing she hears him say.

 

She realizes for the first time in four decades just how much she hates him.)

 

And Kreacher, dear Kreacher, who tends to her every need, is not enough, not nearly enough.

 

She needs—She—

 

(The two of them have always enjoyed locking themselves in the drawing room. She listens one time, just outside the door, not quite able to open the door and put a stop to their melodious laughter.

 

“We’re the best,” her eldest declares. “Better than the entire family tree, Reg, can’t you just see it?”

 

“Even me?” her youngest asks, voice eager.

 

“Of course Reg, especially you. You’ll be the bravest hero of all.”

 

Enough was enough. Her children didn’t have time for their childhood follies. Walbourga pushes the door open and just stops the soft smile playing at her lips.)

 

She screams and screams until her throat bleeds, until they come for her but they never do because she’s alone.

 

Until at last, she stops.

 

 

 

 

\--fini--

 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic came from the time when I saw the Black family tree in [ hp lexicon ](https://www.hp-lexicon.org/wizards/blackfamily.html). I saw that Walbourga was born right around the time her dad was thirteen, which is you know, weird and pretty fucked up, I couldn't stop thinking of it so of course, I started writing about it, and well... Here we are.
> 
> I'm on [ tumblr ](http://pdfcct.tumblr.com/). Come say hi!
> 
> Reviews are very appreciated :)


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